Summary: Four facts about God that should lead to a right response to His work in our lives.

What comes to your mind when you think about an invasion? If you’ve been around a while you might think about an event, like the Pearl Harbor invasion or the Normandy invasion. Maybe the more recent terrorist attacks come to mind. If you’ve ever been robbed you might think of that. The dictionary defines an invasion as going somewhere by force so as to conquer or pillage. It means to enter and overrun harmfully; to encroach upon, to violate. It also means to interfere with or to break in on.

We normally think up negative images when we think about invasion, so we don’t normally think of God as being one to invade our lives or our churches, but this morning that’s exactly how I want you to think of Him. If an invasion means to interfere, then you can be sure God wants to invade your life: He wants to interfere in your business. If an invasion means to break in on or to encroach upon, then again, you can be sure that’s what God wants to do. The entire first chapter of Luke and the Bible record itself is the story of God invading humanity, humanity that would have been content to carry on as usual, but invading it nonetheless with the greatest love ever known. Don’t make any mistake about it: God wants to raid your heart and your mind and He wants to conquer you. He wants to be your Lord and Master.

The question that demands an answer today is: What will you do when God invades your life? Hopefully you’ve been praying that God would do just that. That’s the prayer I hoped we would pray leading up to our revival meeting. But when God answers that prayer and He does invade your life, how should you respond? As we consider the account of God invading the lives of Zacharias and Elizabeth, I believe there are four facts you will see about God, that when properly understood, will lead to a proper response in your own life when God comes for a visit.

Now, without a doubt God invaded the life of Zacharias with a wonderful message announcing the birth of his very special son that we know as John the Baptist. When God invaded his life, four facts about His visit become powerfully obvious.

God Chooses the Time

The Bible says that these were the days of Herod the king. Now you remember that in the book of Haggai that we just finished studying the people were rebuilding Solomon’s Temple, but the new temple paled in comparison to the old one. When Herod became king several hundred years later, knowing how much the temple meant to the people and being an outsider who wanted to gain the people’s favor, he built the Jews a much nicer temple than the one built in Haggai’s day.

We are told that Zacharias had gone into this temple to pray, and as he did there were many others who remained outside the temple who were also praying. Though we are not told so explicitly, I believe these people were praying for the salvation of Israel. In Malachi 4, the last chapter of the last book in the Old Testament, God told the people of Israel that…